Julep

Naturally, I must begin with the Southern cocktail that inspires me so much I named my bar after it. The first julep was not the mint-sugar-bourbon concoction often presented today as the definitive julep. In fact, the earliest juleps, which were mixed in the late 1700s, could include pretty much any spirit. And so there were gin juleps, rum juleps, even madeira juleps. By the mid-1800s, many sources, including Jerry Thomas’s seminal 1862 book, The Bar-Tender’s Guide, asserted that the true Southern julep was mint, sugar, cognac, and peach brandy. What interests me more than the spirits the original julep was made with is the purpose: to mask and mellow bitter remedies, making them easier to ingest. This is implied in the etymology of the word julep. It comes from the Persian golab, or “rose water,”an aromatic distillation of rose petals and water used as a medicine, cosmetic, and flavoring in food and drink. The julep was not incidental to medical care but was in fact a trusted treatment—one of many ways the history of alcohol intersects with the history of medicine. By the nineteenth century, the julep began to appear in books as a proper social drink.

The reason the julep became consistently associated with whiskey, especially bourbon, has a lot to do with the state of the American South a century and a half ago. Jerry Thomas wrote that the julep “in the Southern states is more popular than any other [drink].” However, one year into the Civil War nobody in the South was writing much on the topic of social drinking. And a cocktail of this kind would have been inaccessible for ordinary citizens. This most Southern of beverages was the drink of only the very rich. They alone could afford something so lavish,which depended on a reliable supply of ice (more expensive than milk and much more difficult to store) and lots of cognac and peach brandy. Ice was rarely available beyond the limits of the prosperous port cities. And all those elegant sterling silver cups certainly denote luxury.